<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Haunting by thoughtfullyyoungduck</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22777621">Haunting</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtfullyyoungduck/pseuds/thoughtfullyyoungduck'>thoughtfullyyoungduck</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Haunting [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Gen, M/M, Pennywise (IT) Being an Asshole, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, reddie as parents</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:13:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,807</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22777621</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoughtfullyyoungduck/pseuds/thoughtfullyyoungduck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Richie and Eddie's daughter has a nightmare with someone familiar in it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak &amp; Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Eddie/daughter, Richie/daughter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Haunting [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Haunting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eddie hears his daughter walking towards their room before she even opens the door. Some planks of their floor creek once you step on them, and it never failed to wake either Eddie or Richie up. Jessie, short for Jessica, knows them by heart. </p>
<p>For some reason, she always has to get up during the night to go to the bathroom, and she’s perfected the art of doing it without waking her parents up. The fact that she doesn’t avoid the steps now, indicates to Eddie that she wants to wake them up, or at least that she wants to catch their attention. He hears Richie shuffle beside him, clearly having the same thoughts as he has.</p>
<p>Eddie props himself up against the headboard, tiredly wiping the sleep out of his eyes. Richie lets out a sigh, not annoyed, because god knows Richie could never be annoyed with their daughter, but out of drowsiness as he fights to wake up. </p>
<p>The door opens slightly, and Eddie sees an eye peeking in through the slit. Jessie searches the room, almost afraid to come in, until she makes eye contact with her dad. She had taken to calling Eddie dad and Richie papa, though sometimes she would joke around and call out both of those words, causing both Eddie and Richie to jump on the opportunity to help her with whatever she needed. When she notices Eddie sitting up in bed, she pushes against the door some more, the light from their hallway window streaming in.</p>
<p> The window is located next to a street light, and tonight after laying in a pitch black room, the light is almost blinding. Eddie has to squeeze his eyes shut, fighting the urge to get up and close the door. He doesn’t, because he needs to wake up some more, and if he closed the door he’s not sure how much longer he’ll be awake for.<br/>
Now that it’s clear to Jessie that her parents are awake, she stumbles towards their bedside, tilting her arms in a way that indicates she want to be helped. She’s standing on the left side of the bed, which is Eddie’s side. </p>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, it’s Richie who’s neurotic about which side of the bed to sleep on. He won’t sleep on the left side of the bed, ever. Eddie pretends like he doesn’t know the reason, but in reality, he knows it’s because Richie wants to sleep closest to the door. That way, he could protect Eddie if needed. Although Eddie knows that he would die before he’d let anything happen to Richie, like hell trashmouth is going to protect him and not the other way around, but it makes Richie feel better, so Eddie doesn’t argue.  </p>
<p>Because Eddie still has his eyes closed, he misses the grabby hands of his daughter, it being roughly brought to his attention when Richie elbows him in the ribs. Not hard of course, Richie could never hurt Eddie. ‘Pick up our daughter’, Richie mumbles, finally pushing himself up and slotting against Eddie.<br/>
‘Don’t sass me,’ Eddie grumbles, but he obviously picks her up, throwing the blanket over her. It’s only then that notices that she’s crying. </p>
<p>‘What’s wrong sweetheart?’ He asks concerned. Richie has only just discovered that Jessie is crying himself, and he reaches over give her a kiss on the top of her head.<br/>
‘Daddy’, she wails, hiccupping with the force of her sobs. Richie and Eddie share a look of concern over her head. Eddie hugs her close to his chest, her tears failing against one of Richie’s old t-shirts he’s wearing. </p>
<p>Richie places a hand on her back, swiping softly up and down.<br/>
Eddie worries for a second, scared that she’s going to make herself throw up, but he focuses on the issue at hand, and if she throws up he’ll deal with that later.<br/>
‘Did you have a bad dream?’ Richie suggests, still rubbing her back. Jessie nods erratically, but she doesn’t stop crying, nor does she pick up her head look at Eddie or Richie. Eddie can’t help but feel a little relieved, and he notices that Richie has the same look on his face. It may be awful, but Eddie was worried that she had actually gotten hurt, a dream was bad, but at least she wasn’t physically injured. </p>
<p>‘Alright, it’s okay buttercup come on.’ Eddie says, struggling to lift her head where it’s glued to his shoulder. She doesn’t budge.<br/>
‘Breath with papa come on, bug‘, Richie tries but fails again.<br/>
‘hey did I tell you my new jokes yet? I bet you haven’t. Do you want me to tell you?’</p>
<p>Jessie usually isn’t allowed to watch Richie’s shows, because of all the sex jokes that Richie makes. It’s a rule that both Eddie and Richie, surprisingly, follow to a T. Eddie will videotape some jokes that she’s allowed to hear, and Richie will practice jokes on her and Jessie loves them. To be fair, she also laughed when she knocked her head against the sharp edge of their table, causing a gaping slice in her forehead, so Eddie doesn’t take her sense of humor all that serious. </p>
<p>She nods again, a small ‘yes please’, floating through the room. Richie smiles, proud of himself for thinking of it before trying to come up with a story to tell her.<br/>
‘Okay so me and you dad love swimming right. Even when we were kids. So this one time your dad and uncle Stan decide they don’t want to go swimming.’ </p>
<p>Richie launches into a detailed story of the time when he and Stan went with the rest of the losers to the quarry, but decided that the water was too cold to actually swim.</p>
<p>Richie had complained for hours before finally grinning and backing off. Eddie knew and knows Richie well enough however to realize that he wasn’t just about to give up. Instead, when Stan let his guard down, he had been pushed over the cliff by Richie. While being shoved forward Richie had held on to Stan’s shorts, somehow ripping them off and letting Stan fall towards the water naked.</p>
<p>Eddie can’t help but laugh thinking about it now, Stan had been absolutely furious, and Richie was lucky stan hadn’t wanted to emerge from the water, or he would have died that day. They were 17 at the time, and it was the last time the losers ever hung out before leaving Derry. It makes the memory bittersweet.  He can feel Jessie laughing too, her small body shaking from giggles instead of sobs now. </p>
<p>She’s still sniffling, but at least she isn’t panicking so much anymore.<br/>
Eddie tries again to lift her slowly, and this time she lets him. He smiles at her comfortingly, whipping the remaining tears of her cheeks.<br/>
‘Cute, cute, cute’, Richie coos, firstly pinching at his daughters cheeks before doing the same to Eddie. </p>
<p>‘Stop it’, Eddie grumbles at Richie. Jessie flashes them a huge grin. She has gotten used to the way her fathers are when they’re together.<br/>
‘Do you want to talk about it sweetheart?’ Eddie asks, not wanting to upset his daughter, but also wanting to get to the bottom of this.<br/>
She shakes her head quickly, and she looks like she’s about to start crying again. Richie shushes her softly, shrugging when he and Eddie make eye contact. Eddie relents, the last thing he want is to make his daughter upset again. </p>
<p>‘Do you want to sleep with us?’, he asks instead. </p>
<p>‘Yes please’, Jessie says, already shuffling in the middle of the bed. Richie gniffels when she does, remembering a time where she would always come to wake them up when she needed to get up during the night. It had caused for a lot of close calls, and Eddie forcing Richie to stay on the opposite side of the bed.<br/>
Now though they smile at each other, watching as Jessie gets comfortable. It takes her a while, she keeps writing around. It should be annoying, but Richie can’t find it anything but adoring. As Eddie glances to his alarm clock, he sees that the time is 3:10 pm. He’s going to have trouble waking up for his job tomorrow. He doesn’t care though, Jessie and Richie go first with everything, especially his sleep. </p>
<p>When jessie finally quiets down, and Richie and Eddie start to get comfortable; she suddenly shoots up again. She crawl over Eddie rushing out of the room. Eddie is about to go after her, confused by what was happening, she comes back. Her stuffed animal is clutched in her arms, a shy smile on her face.<br/>
‘I can’t forget about mister cuddle’, she muses, getting closer to the bed. Eddie smiles at her, every time he thinks that he can’t love her any more than he already does, she does something like this. </p>
<p>This time, it doesn’t take so long for her to lie down, and Richie pulls the blanket over her.<br/>
‘Goodnight young fellows’, Richie says in a horrible English accent. It causes Jessie and Eddie to laugh though, and that was all Richie was trying to do.<br/>
The next five minutes are completely soundless, and Eddie is almost assured that Jessie is asleep, when she speaks up again.  ‘It was a clown’, she whispers, her hands toying with her stuffed animal. </p>
<p>Eddie freezes up, looking at Richie with wide eyes. His world seems to come crashing down. His silence lasts long enough to worry his daughter, who is staring up at him with curious eyes. Richie’s eyes are just as wide as his, and he’s not saying anything either.<br/>
Eddie shakes his head firmly, convincing himself that she probably just saw a weird looking clown in a show. He tries his best to smile, but he’s sure it must look more grimace. </p>
<p>‘What happened, Jessie’? He asks, trying his best to keep his voice steady. Jessie shrugs, laying back down on the pillow. ‘He just talked to me. He gave me a red balloon.’ Richie’s eyes seem kind off wet, and he clenches both Jessie and Eddie closer.<br/>
‘He said that you and papa used to play with him, and he misses you. Then he tried to bite me.’ She yawns,  apparently she isn’t scared of her dream anymore.</p>
<p>Eddie and Richie however are both wide eyed and awake. Scared to pieces. ‘But it’s alright, because I pulled away fast enough.’ She holds her stuffed animal close to her mouth, getting saliva all of it. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll protect you.’ Richie promises, though he seems just as terrified as Eddie. Jessie falls asleep after that, but Eddie and Richie stay awake, stirring in their worries for their daughter, and in extend their life. In the dark, Eddie swears he sees two yellow eyes.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>